James' Choice
by BlackChrys
Summary: James' CHERUB career is in the rear veiw mirror now, but he has a dramatic choice to make, one that may lead him back to old friends... And older enemies...
1. Chapter 1

CHERUB: James' Choice

By Alex

James woke up to the rain pattering on his window. He got out of bed and went for a piss in the bathroom. Walking back into his room, after kicking an old t-shirt out of the way, he picked up the phone and listened to his messages. There was a message from Zara, "Meet me in my office as soon as possible, It's urgent", in the soothing but slightly distorted voice of the chairwoman of CHERUB through the answer phone. "Bollucks" thought James, this usually meant bad news, but he couldn't recall anything he'd done that merited a trip to the Zara's office. Even so, he pulled on his black Cherub t-shirt that he only used for when he was in trouble, so it was pristine. He also pulled on a pair of his cleanest combat trousers and boots, and began the short walk to the Director's office.

"Hello James", said Zara, warmly, promptly shaking his hand as he entered, "We have a new mission for you."

"Sure, sign me up" said James, enthusiastic because he was nearly 18 now, and would soon be leaving Cherub.

"Don't be so hasty James, we want you to think about this before you rush into it, and I know that you value your potential missions, because you don't have many left in your time at Cherub, and we will be sad to lose such a great agent, but we want to know you will be fully committed to this mission, if you wish to accept it."

"Do go on", said James calmly.

"Okay then. Well, we've got a reasonably easy mission for you here. I'll give you the full mission briefing later, but I'll give you the basics now, just to make sure you want to do it. As I'm sure you know, burglaries are extremely common around London, and usually the people who commit them are alone, with one single goal in mind and that is to enrich their lives by breaking into other people's houses and stealing expensive things such as electronics, or jewellery. Usually these crooks that work alone are fairly easy to catch, because they make mistakes and occasionally foul up jobs, or leave obvious evidence lying around. But recently the amount of burglaries has increased dramatically and the police are finding it harder and harder to catch the culprits. Due to a recent tip-off from a trusted source, we have found a 'company' that specialises in theft and takes orders from buyers to whom they sell the stolen goods. Your job is to infiltrate this organisation and find out who the big players are behind it. But there is one thing…"

Sounds good, but what's the problem?" asked James.

"The organisation belonged to your mother."


	2. Chapter 2

James was sat in his room thinking things over. He wanted to go on this mission, because it would probably turn out to be his last as his career at CHERUB was almost at its end. But could he face infiltrating his mum's old theft empire? He toyed with these ideas for a good few hours in his room until Bruce came in asking what the hell he'd been doing.

"James, where in the name of bejesus have you been?"

"Sorry Bruce, just been thinking"

"What about? Never knew you were the thinking type, eh James?" giving James a friendly prod as he walked in. If anyone else had said that to James they would have been asking for a good kicking, but Bruce, despite being a lot smaller and scrawny, could still kick his arse, and so James just gave him a friendly shove back.

"Get lost Bruce" said James, smiling.

"Seriously though, you never spend this long in your room unless you're sleeping, what's up?"

"Been given a new mission"

"Mate, what's so bad about that? We're all scrounging for missions now; you should count yourself bloody lucky!"

"Did I ever tell you that before my mum died and I came here, she ran one of the biggest theft empires in London?" Yeah, well a mission came up to infiltrate and take it down because they are now rumoured to be arms dealing and drug smuggling too…"

"Shit man… and they picked you out to do it?"

"Mmhm"

"Shhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttt…"

"Think I should do it?"

"I think you should, man, I'm not particularly great when it comes to advice but the last thing I want is to look back at Cherub and think to myself 'I wish I did that mission', you may not get another mission here at Cherub, so I'd take it…"

"But what about my mum? Would she really want me to do this?"

"She'd want you to do what's right" putting his arm on James' shoulder.

"Okay, I'll go see Zara tomorrow and tell her I'm up for it…"

"Youuu dirty git…." said Bruce, smacking James on the shoulder.

"Only you Bruce, only you…." Said James as Bruce left his room.

It had just gone 9 so James decided to go down into the weights room to make himself tired. After a few hours with free weights he got bored and went back to his room to flop onto his bed. He flicked on the TV and changed through the channels but nothing interesting was on so he flicked it off and turned his light out.


End file.
